New issue published
Welcome to the first issue for 2025 of the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies. It features an article by Lancy Thomas Kurakar on what is Thomas Hardy’s last and possibly most puzzling novel, Jude the Obscure, focussing on the understudied topic of the behaviour of strange child ‘Little Father Time’. What follows is David M. Fahey’s fascinating account of a forgotten woman historian of the late Victorian period, Bertha Meriton Cordery, later Gardiner: what were the implications of her marriage to prominent male historian, Samuel Rawson Gardiner? And thirdly, Alfred R. Bunn undertakes an exploration which is textual, but also based on real-life exploration by himself and others – investigating what may have happened to New Zealand’s famous Pink and White Terraces near Rotorua, in the volcanic eruption of 1886.
We also have reviews on a range of topics from poetry and fiction, including the ‘novel poem’ and translations of Jane Eyre; the world of Temperance periodicals; the resistance of some ‘New Women’ to female solidarity; Australian colonial settlers’ creation of monuments; a young Englishman’s diary of his experience in 1850s Hong Kong.
I would like to thank in particular the new Reviews Editor for this issue, Helen Blythe, who has been very active and efficient.
The next issue will also be a general one, so new contributions are very welcome.
Joanne Wilkes
Editor
June 2025